


A Sword, A Shield

by Infinite_Monkeys



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Family Feels, Gen, Introspection, Non-Graphic Violence, Post-Thor (2011), Suicide Attempt, questionable parenting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-26
Updated: 2018-04-26
Packaged: 2019-04-28 00:49:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14437866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Infinite_Monkeys/pseuds/Infinite_Monkeys
Summary: "She made one son a shield so strong he forgot to look for danger, and forged another into a weapon that destroyed himself."





	A Sword, A Shield

**Author's Note:**

> Hi all! I'm new here and mostly posting this to try and figure out how this site works.

Years ago, she had a son who was both gentleman and prince, kind as the springtime, warm as the summer, a prince who shone bright as the sun.

Years ago, she had a son.

She had a son.

Had.

He had been the gentlest soul she'd ever known, and all who had known him had loved him. None of them, though, loved him as much as she. None could. She was the proudest of mothers, and she encouraged his warmth until it grew strong enough to brighten the whole of Asgard.

He was a light that grew brighter until it burned out.

He was her baby, too soft and to sweet for this world.

He wasn't a fighter, and now he was gone.

Her Balder.

Her baby.

Her light.

 

* * *

 

Of course, when Thor was born, and he looked up at her with those wide, innocent blue eyes, she was worried.

When he first smiled, and it was like the sun breaking through the clouds, it sent a shiver of dread through her heart.

But as he grew, her worry lessened. In so many ways, he was nothing like her Balder. Where Balder had been quiet and reserved and studious, Thor was loud and boisterous. Where Balder had been philosophical, Thor was direct. Where Balder had been slender and graceful, Thor was broad and strong.

Most of all, though, Thor was a fighter. She knew without a doubt he'd have fought fate as easily as the imaginary monsters he chased around the nursery.

Had Balder been more like Thor, he might still be alive.

 

* * *

 

 

When Odin handed her a child pilfered from Jotunheim wrapped in his bloody cape, she wasn't worried in the slightest. The child was a survivor; that he had made his way from the barren wasteland where they'd found him and into her arms was proof enough of that.

Besides, unlike his brothers (and they were his brothers now, this was her child, her heart told her, as surely as Thor), he was not a creature of warmth. They had pulled him from the snow, but surely some of it remained inside him, underneath the starlight-pale skin and hair black as the night sky.

He wasn't like Balder, she reminded herself as he grew into a slight and graceful child who danced through the palace halls.

(If she taught him how to stand straight and proper, how to walk with his shoulders squared, well, he was a prince. How else should he walk?)

He wasn't like Balder, she reminded herself when she found him in the library, laughing at stories written in times long past.

(If she directed him to the stories of warriors and battles, well, they were good stories. Thor liked them well enough.)

He wasn't like Balder, she reminded herself after he came home from his first hunt and cried in her lap at the fate of the deer they'd brought down.

(She told him to keep trying, that he'd come to enjoy it in time, as he grew older. She didn't think of another little boy who was friends with all the woodland creatures, who sat down to talk with the deer and swore he could understand what they wanted to say back.)

If she smiled at his mischief when only he caught her eye, well, he was clever, and she was his mother. It wasn't that the ever more frequent pranks brought him farther away from the golden-hearted child she'd loved and lost.

It wasn't.

 

* * *

 

"Mother," he had told her, "I see a future without me in it."

The calm in his voice had frightened her as much as his words. He had a gift; few in Asgard could See as they did, and Balder had surpassed her own limited gifts as a seer long ago. Whatever he felt sure enough to speak of had always come to pass, and she guessed from his gentle, knowing smile that many more of his weaker visions played themselves out as well.

So when he spoke to her of Seeing his own death, she hadn't wanted him to be so calm.

For the first time, she wished her peaceful son would ready himself for a fight.

Nonetheless, a war would be fought. If he wouldn't struggle against fate, she would struggle for him, defend him using whatever means necessary. She would be his shield, his protection, his savior.

She wove the spells with an urgency she never felt at her loom, spells of warding, of protection against everything she could think of. First metals, then woods, then stone, glass and ice and rope, anything she could imagine that could hurt her boy. She spelled his skin so that fire could not burn him nor ice chill him, spelled his blood to ward off poison and disease, spelled his bones so they could not be snapped or crushed.

It sapped nearly all of the magic at her disposal, drained it so she doubted it would ever be the same, but it was worth it. The spell was near invincible, and so was Balder.

Fate, if it truly wanted him, would have to drag him from her arms. She doubted it was strong enough.

She hadn't even tried to discouraged him when, in his delight, he boasted to his friends and they made a game of trying weapons against him to see how even the strongest failed.

Mistletoe. She had forgotten mistletoe.

She screamed for days when the brought him to the healing wing, too gone already for anyone to help, Hod's arrow sticking out of his heart.

He hadn't so much as flinched when he saw it coming, they told her.

She went quiet when her voice finally failed her, but her heart was screaming still.

 

* * *

 

 

Her quiet resistance came to a head over his weapons training.

Loki didn't enjoy it. He'd made no secret of the fact, and with his delicate frame and quiet disposition he struggled more than his peers in the sparring ring.

He wanted to give it up. Odin wanted to let him.

She had nothing against scholars, not in principle. He'd probably enjoy himself if he took that route, dedicated himself to learning. Norns knew he had the mind for it. There was a place in Asgard for academics, and he'd certainly fit in there more neatly than with the warriors and his brother.

But Loki needed to be strong. She couldn't save Balder because she started too late; she built him a shield rather than making sure he didn't need one. Loki needed to be his own weapon, not always, perhaps, but certainly whenever it became necessary. To be able to strike quickly and unhesitatingly in his own defense, should a situation arise.

So Frigga took him aside and started teaching him herself.

At first the daggers and defensive magic were as foreign to him as the swords and spears on the training grounds, but Frigga drilled him again and again, and he wanted so badly to please her. She would keep him practicing until his little body shook with exhaustion and he nearly collapsed into bed at the end of the day, earning complaints from Thor about how his brother never played with him anymore.

It worked, though. Loki gradually became good with the weapons she taught him. Better than good, even. He was a force to be reckoned with, nearly as deadly as his brother.

And if the other warriors would tease him for what she taught, call him and his methods womanly or weak, that was a small price to pay when her son was safe, protected by strength and skill none could take from him.

Balder she had given a shield, but Loki, now, would be a sword, a weapon in his own right.

Asgard didn't love him as they had Balder.

She loved him the more fiercely for it.

 

* * *

 

He came to her nearly in tears the day after his brother was banished, a new king with the weight of a coming war resting heavily on his shoulders.

He told her that he knew, ranted against Jotunheim, and his own blood, and her and the unconscious man he called father for not telling him sooner where he was from.

Most of what he yelled though the tears that never quite fell was nonsense. He wasn't a monster, they were never lying when they called him son, no one loved him any less for what he was.

One thing, though, in the long diatribe stood out to her and stuck with her.

"Now I know why I never fit in," he railed at her. "I know why I've always felt like I was being pressed into the wrong mold, one I could never hope to fit."

She felt a twinge of guilt at those words.

Still, she wasn't sorry he knew how to defend himself. How to fight, be a fighter, survivor. That was not something she would ever regret.

When he left, it was with his shoulders held high and fire in his eyes.

He couldn't have looked less like Balder if he tried.

 

* * *

 

She became worried when Odin awoke from the Odinsleep and staggered to his feet without a word to her, ignoring all of the flustered healers telling him he wasn't due to be awake yet. He ran, as much as someone still half-asleep and muddled can run, without so much as a glance in her direction. He ran towards the bridge.

She knew better than to follow him when he was in this sort of mood, but it unnerved her, so she sat down with a bowl of water and threw a quick scrying spell over its surface.

The image flickered to life just in time for her to see her two children hanging over the edge of the abyss.

To hear as Loki told Odin what he had done to make him proud. Look, see, she heard the meaning beneath the words he spoke. See, I have become the weapon you wanted. I am strong and ruthless and everything you taught me to be.

"No, Loki," Odin said, and she saw the weapon turn inwards.

He let go.

She screamed like she had for Balder, was still crying out when Thor and Odin found her, both of them grief-stricken and confused.

It took several days for her to recognize the cold slithering ache in her chest as guilt, and several more for her to realize where it came from.

This was the second time, now, she had tried to avoid a fate she feared for her child and instead brought it about.

She made one son a shield so strong he forgot to look for danger, and forged another into a weapon that destroyed himself.

She hated that she had tried.

She hated that she had failed.

She hated, above all, the persistent thought that nagged at her, insistent, haunting.

She had made him what she wanted; he was not like Balder. He was not soft, not sweet and fragile as her first son had been. Loki would have fought fate, dodged the arrow.

But Balder would not have let go.

**Author's Note:**

> For the record, I don't think Frigga was a bad parent. This was mostly written because most portrayals of Loki's childhood assume everyone in Asgard gives him crap about not being a "proper" warrior, but in the mythology Balder was more Disney Princess than Viking Warrior and absolutely no one ever had a problem with it. It got me wondering why, if adopting a less warrior-like lifestyle was acceptable, Loki never seemed to consider it. This was one of the (admittedly unlikely) options my brain came up with.


End file.
